Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.
EXCLUSIVE Foreigners account for 15% of workplace fatalities this year: source
Demolition workers climb on steel bars at a construction site in Gwangju, July 18. Foreign workers account for more than 15 percent of all workplace fatalities that have occurred so far this year, a source familiar with the issue told The Korea Times. Newsis
By Jung Min-ho
Risk of deadly accidents far greater for non-Koreans who make up 3.2% of workforce
Foreign workers have accounted for more than 15 percent of all workplace fatalities so far this year in Korea, a source familiar with the issue told The Korea Times.
According to a report published on Tuesday by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, 443 workers died as a result of industrial accidents between January and September, down from 459 during the same period last year.
Of them, 67, or 15.1 percent, were foreign nationals, the source said. These figures show that the risk of deadly accidents is disproportionately higher for foreign workers who make up less than 3.3 percent of the labor force in this country.
Data released last year revealed that 923,000 foreign nationals were employed in the country, accounting for approximately 3.24 percent of the total workforce of 28.42 million in Korea.
So far, details such as the nationalities of foreign workers involved in workplace accidents have largely been excluded from the ministry's official reports, other than only a few exceptional cases.
However, officials told The Korea Times that they would push to start including information on foreign victims’ nationalities in quarterly reports next year. They noted that implementing this change would require approval from Statistics Korea, the government-run statistical agency.
This moves comes as some politicians, including Rep. Cha Gyu-geun of the minor opposition Rebuilding Korea Party, call for more transparency and a better statistical system for foreign nationals living here. A justice ministry report revealed last month by the lawmaker showed a staggering 44.2 percent of all 15,325 deaths of foreign nationals in Korea between 2018 and 2022 were attributed to “other” causes, meaning the reasons were unclear.
The latest report on industrial accidents suggests that workers employed in the construction industry are at the greatest risk of deadly accidents. Of the total 443, 203 were construction workers, followed by those in the manufacturing industry (134) and other industries (106).
The report also shows that 249 of the victims were employees of small firms that have 49 or fewer workers, a reduction from 267 during the same period in 2023. Meanwhile, the figure increased slightly from 192 to 194 among bigger companies with 50 or more workers.
Slips and falls account for 36.8 percent of the deaths, followed by falling objects (14 percent), jamming (10.8 percent) and collisions (9.3 percent). Other causes include explosions and fires, electrical accidents and chemical exposure.
By region, 136 of the deaths occurred in Gyeonggi Province, followed by South Gyeongsang Province (40), Seoul (37), Busan (32), South Jeolla Province (32), North Gyeongsang Province (31), North Jeolla Province (24), North Chungcheong Province (22) and South Chungcheong Province (21).
“The government plans to strengthen monitoring of the high-risk industries and areas and to closely manage the workplaces through on-site inspections and meetings [to reduce such cases],” the ministry said in a statement. “In addition, we would step up efforts to keep the trend of decline until the end of the year by helping safety supervisions and encouraging both labor and management to take part proactively in the process.”